Before taking this course what I knew about addiction wasn’t very much at all. Throughout my life, I have seen and been around strangers and in close contact with people that I know personally who were addicted to a substance, but I never really understood what addiction really meant. Later on, while taking this class was when I got the understanding that addiction is a very complex condition, it is a disease that manifests itself in the brain, and even though the user knows its harmful consequences, they are compelled to continue use.
I know that death is not the only tragic result of drug use and addiction. The individual can also be mentally and physically impaired; they can lose relationships, and jobs, and end up in prison as well.
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In the early years of my life, I grew up on an island called Trinidad and Tobago which is located in the West Indies; there I resided with my family. I came from a single-parent household and I was the youngest of her eight children. My mother was one of the hardest working people I have ever known, she worked several different jobs just so she could provide for her children and I now see where my sister and I got our work ethics from.
Growing up in such a large family was fun at times, but it doesn’t mean that we were never short of issues. One of my older brothers struggled with drug addiction; he was addicted to cocaine and marijuana for many years. This was a dark time because my family spent years living in hell having to deal with my brother’s addiction and not knowing how to help him. In the end, my brother lost his battle and died due to an overdose, he was only 32 years of age.
I know that there are many parents who have in the past and who are presently going through the same pain and suffering as my family once did, having to watch their children on a course that could lead to their demise and feeling helpless not knowing how they can save them because the substance has already taken control.
In my country drug, alcohol and many other forms of addiction were always very prominent and sometimes easy to identify. Almost everywhere I turned I could see someone begging for money or living on the streets due to the stronghold the addiction had taken on their lives. It seemed as though they had lost all control and had surrendered to their addiction, giving up all hope of ever becoming to clean and restore their lives again.
I was never an expert in what addiction was but I surely knew what the end results of its use. Most of my bothers’ friends used some sort of substance so I could have seen why it was very hard for him to even attempt to stop use; he was constantly surrounded by it.
Because of my brother being addicted to cocaine and marijuana, I am sure that over the years he had built up a tolerance for the drugs and he needed to use larger amounts to feel its effects, and this is when it started getting worse. He started saying disgusting things; he became violent and acted out in the most disturbing ways. He would steal from the family lied and even go as far as to hurt others when he wanted money to support his habit. This when on for many years, but I was too young to even know what was really going on with him.
One day I saw my mother in tears pleading with him to stop. I could tell that she had reached her breaking point because on that day I could actually see and I literally felt her pain because I too had tears flowing down from my eyes, I could feel it streaming down my cheeks, this is when I saw how real her pain was. I knew that she was hurting and felt powerless not knowing how to save her son, but it seemed that the more he used was the more he got worse.
I could remember a time when I was very young; my brother was a completely different person. He babysat my siblings and me and allowed us to play outside in the yard with our friends when our mother was at work. He would also make a snack when we were hungry. My mother could have depended on him to help around the house and never was disrespectful to her. By becoming addicted to drugs it did not just change his life but it also affected the lives of everyone who knew him personally.
Over the years of my brother’s addiction, my family tried almost everything they could to get him to help. I do not think at that time there were any rehab programs available in my country, and if there were I know that we definitely could not afford to send him there, but different methods were used but it was not very effective. He was fully aware of his addictive disorder and the problems it caused, but he was unable to stop it on his own no matter how hard he tried. His addiction caused him to have some health problems, his kidneys began to fail and the relationship between the family and his friends started to deteriorate.
At times he would show signs of wanting to do better, but his condition would cause him to relapse. Later on, while taking this class I learned that my brother’s actions were a symptom of the disease he suffered. His unconscionable behavior was caused by a brain disease stemming from his addiction.
After my brother passed away my family continued to struggle. Addiction traumatizes and trauma endures because we suffered a kind of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and I do not think that my mother ever recovered from it.
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